and I ran back to that hollow again
the moon was just a sliver back then

There is part of her that knows she should have gone back sooner. 

Part of her that knows her mother will be displeased, her father even angry, and like a petulant child, she had avoided it. But there is also another part of her, one that is perhaps more mature, that is angry; part of her that remembers the way her mother and Kingslay had spoken about her as if she wasn't there with air that was thick with tension. The way they had stood stony-eyed on either side of her, and she had felt hopelessly lost between them—and, yet, she knows that too is an excuse.

She was strong enough to handle them disliking one another, old enough to rise above them discussing her like she wasn't there. That wasn’t the reason that she had fled and it wasn’t the reason that she had not returned yet. It was the fear. The fear of the illness spreading through her veins; the terror at what was becoming of her when the very land itself made it feel like her veins were dry and rubbing together.

The fear is the reason she had not returned.

And it is fear she felt, for a moment, when she heard her mother—the disappointment clear in the way her mother’s voice demanded her presence. Lifting her homely head, her mouth pulled into a slight frown and her stomach churned in reaction. But, like a good child, she obeyed, moving with her head dipped down low. When she was a few yards away, she came to a stop, feeling both utter relief at being in her mother’s presence and absolute fear at the memories of illness that it dredged up. 

“Hello, mom.”

and I ached for my heart like some tin man
when it came, oh, it beat and it boiled and it rang

and I ran back to that hollow again
the moon was just a sliver back then

There are few things that would destroy Etro to her core. One is seeing her mother crumble before her—the magician always so regal and composed. The other, oh, the other is the unfinished sentence that hangs between them. Yael does not need to finish before Etro begins to hear a roaring in her ears and feel her knees go weak. 

They buckle, and she stumbles forward a step, her muddy brown eyes wild and unseeing, glazed over with tears. No. It wasn’t possible. She couldn’t imagine a world without her father—without the behemoth of a stallion’s shadow chasing the camels and then shrouding her as she raced beneath him on the sand, determined to keep up.

How—how could he be gone?

Without thinking, she staggers to her mother, leaning onto the mare and pressing her face into her golden neck. Tears begin to fall, and soon she is shaking with them, completely naked in her grief. “How?” she manages to choke out, between gasping breaths. “When?” Not that she wants to know the answer—she certainly doesn’t want to envision it—but she has to know. She has to know that it was peaceful, that he didn’t hurt. “I am so sorry, mom,” she gasps, holding her mother close. 

“I am so sorry.”

For everything. For the shared grief of the loss of Vanquish—but, perhaps, more for the absence. She had left so suddenly, in such a fit of teenage rebellion, and what she had thought was harmless, she now saw as absentee negligence. She should have been there for her mother. She should have been there to comfort her and help the rest of the family. Instead, she had been fleeing her fears. She’d never forgive herself.

and I ached for my heart like some tin man
when it came, oh, it beat and it boiled and it rang

and I ran back to that hollow again
the moon was just a sliver back then

At first, Etro doesn’t understand. Another daughter? Family had done this? She feels as if her very veins are shriveling inside of her, and she feels dizzy from the blood rushing in her head. Not dead—murdered. He had been taken from her. Etro had only felt rage a handful of times in her life, but she felt it now. She felt it flooding through her body; it was a cleansing feeling, everything else being washed away with that one singular emotion. It took everything from her until she could hardly breathe.

All of a sudden, she understood how Kingslay could smell like life taken.
She felt very much like she was capable of doing just that.

“His daughter did this?” she finally manages to say, and she is surprised that the stability of her voice. It does not crack the way it does in her mind. Instead, she feels frighteningly calm. Her vision clears and the anger simmers in her stomach, making the rest of the world slow down to a crawl. “Who?”

She doesn’t know what she would do with the information—has no idea if she is capable of carrying out the violent needs that stretch from her marrow to the tips of her nerves—but she has to know. She has to know the name so that she can etch it in her bones and whisper it at night. She has to know who to direct this fiery fury at so that she does not break from it. She needed a target. She needed to know who to hate.

and I ached for my heart like some tin man
when it came, oh, it beat and it boiled and it rang